The Art of Pricing Great Art

This is a great article about how to get useful information from a bunch of data.

Galenson took the trouble to collect the data, then analyzed it properly, and found out something that is (in my opinion) useful. Each of these steps is problematic for the small investor looking to understand market data. Getting the data is expensive. Analyzing it requires specialized skills.

So he began collecting data on the sale price of works by Warhol, Jackson Pollock and other American artists, and he discovered a pattern. Most of them produced their most valuable work either very early in their career, like Warhol, or very late, like Pollock. When he expanded his research to European painters, he found the same pattern. Not only that, but the two groups tended to approach art, and to talk about it, in strikingly different ways. The young geniuses, like Gauguin, Picasso and Van Gogh, were conceptual innovators whose paintings broke sharply from previous work. They typically had a precise goal in mind when they started a piece and didn’t need long to finish it. “Above all, don’t sweat over a painting,” Gauguin once told a friend. “A great sentiment can be rendered immediately.

I love the quote from Gaugin.

Link: NYT